MELK, maternal embryonic leucine zipper kinase, was previously identified as a new member of the snf1/AMPK serine-threonine kinase family that is involved in mammalian embryonic development (Heyer B S et al., Dev Dyn. 1999 Aug. 215(4):344-51). The gene was shown to play an important role in stem cell renewal (Nakano I et al., J Cell Biol. 2005 Aug. 1, 170(3):413-27), cell-cycle progression (Blot J et al., Dev Biol. 2002 Jan. 15, 241(2):327-38; Seong H A et al., Biochem J. 2002 Feb. 1, 361(Pt 3):597-604) and pre-mRNA splicing (Vulsteke V et al., J Biol Chem. 2004 Mar. 5, 279(10):8642-7. Epub 2003 Dec. 29). In addition, through gene expression profile analysis using a genome-wide cDNA microarray containing 23,040 genes, MELK was recently shown to be up-regulated in breast cancer (Lin M L et al., Breast Cancer Res. 2007; 9 (1):R17, WO2006/016525, WO2008/023841). In fact, MELK is up-regulated in several cancer cells, for example lung, bladder, lymphoma and cervical cancer cells (See WO2004/031413, WO2007/013665, and WO2006/085684, the disclosures of which are incorporated by reference herein). Northern blot analysis on multiple human tissues and cancer cell lines demonstrated that MELK was over-expressed at a significantly high level in a great majority of breast cancers and cell lines, but was not expressed in normal vital organs (heart, liver, lung and kidney) (WO2006/016525). Furthermore, suppression of MELK expression by siRNA was shown to significantly inhibit growth of human breast cancer cells. Accordingly, MELK is considered to be a suitable target for cancer therapy in the treatment of a wide array of cancer types.